The Master Sniper by Stephen Hunter
Repp tuned out the chatter and plowed on. It was farming country, smoother here west of the River Lech, near the Lake of Konstanz. The Alps could be seen, especially the 9,000 feet of the Zugspitze, far to the south, unusual since it was not September or October. To the west, the Black Forest massif, off of which Repp had come, glowered smudgily against the horizon.
“Perfect hunting weather for Jabos. You’d think they’d be thick as flies, the bastards,” said Lenz.
“Oh, Christ,” said somebody.
Repp looked up.
It was too late to turn back, or fade off into the fields. They’d just rounded a bend in the road and there in the trees was a self-propelled antitank gun, huge thing, dragon on treads, riveted body, dun-colored. SS men in their camouflage tunics lounged about it, their STG’s slung. Repp could tell from the flashes they were from the Field Police regiment of SS “Das Reich.”
“Watch yourselves,” muttered Gerngoss, just ahead. “Don’t do anything stupid. These pricks mean business.”
The young officer in the open pulpit of the gun mount leaned forward and with an exaggerated smile said, “You fellows going to Switzerland?” He wore a metal plaque with an embossed eagle on a chain around his neck; it hung down on his chest like a medieval breastplate.
“A joker,” muttered Lenz.
“No, sir,” replied Gerngoss, trying to sound casual but speaking over dry breaths through a dry mouth, “just going on down the road to a job.”
“Oh, I see,” said the young officer affably, though his eyes were metallic. “And which one might that be?” As he spoke one of the other SS men climbed down off the hull, unslinging his rifle.
“We’re engineers, Lieutenant,” explained Gerngoss, his voice rising suddenly. “Headed toward Tuttlingen. A bridge there to be blown before the Americans get to it. Then we’ll rejoin our unit, Third Brigade of the Eighteenth Motorized Engineer Battalion, south of Munich. Here, I have the orders here.” He held them out. Repp could see his hand tremble.
“Bring them here, Sergeant Fatty,” the young officer said.
Gerngoss waddled over fretfully. In the shadow of the armored vehicle, he handed them up to the young officer.
“These orders are dated May first. Two days ago. It says you’re traveling by truck.”
“I know, sir,” said Gerngoss, a weak smile bobbing on his lips. “We were hit by Jabos yesterday. A bad day. The truck was crippled, some people hurt, had to find a field hospital—”
“I think you’re stalling.” He smiled. “Dawdling. Waiting for the war to end.” The SS lieutenant laid an arm across the MG-42 mounted before him. In his peripheral vision, Repp saw the SS man flanking off to the right, STG loose and ready.
“Oh, shit,” Lenz muttered tensely next to him.
“S-sir,” insisted Gerngoss, “w-we’re doing our jobs. Our duty.” His voice was small, coming from such a big man.
“I think,” said the lieutenant, “you’re a Jew-pig. A deserter. It’s because of swine like you that we lost the war. Fat anushole Austrian, can’t wait to get home and fuck Jew-cunts and eat pastries in the Vienna cafés with Bolsheviks.”
“Please. Please,” whimpered Gerngoss.
“Go on. Get out of here, you and your Army scum. I ought to hang you all.” He spoke with angry contempt. “Drag your fat asses out of here.”
“Yes, sir,” mumbled Gerngoss, and shambled away.
“Thank Christ,” muttered Lenz. “Sweet Jesus, thank Christ,” and the squad began to shuffle forward humbly under the sullen gaze of the SS men.
“Ah, one second, please,” the smiling lieutenant in the turret called out. “You, third from the end. Thin fellow.”
Repp realized the man was talking to him.
“Lieutenant?” he inquired meekly.
“Say, friend, I just noticed that the piping on your collar is white,” the smiler announced. He seemed quite joyful. “White—infantry. The others have black—engineers.”
“He’s not with us,” announced Lenz, stepping away quickly. “He straggled in yesterday.”
“He said he was trying to find his unit,” Gerngoss called. “Second Battalion of Eleventh Infantry. It sounded fishy to me.”
“I have papers,” Repp said. He realized he was standing alone on the road.
“Here. Quickly.”
Repp scurried over, holding the documents up. The young officer took them. As he read, his eyebrows rose. He was freckled and fair, about twenty years old. A lick of blond hair hung down from under his helmet.
“I was separated from my unit,” Repp said, “in a big attack, sir. The Americans came and bombed us. It was worse than Russia.”
The young lieutenant smiled.
“I’m rather afraid these papers aren’t any good. Waffen SS field regulations supersede OKW forms. As of May first, on the order of the Reichsführer SS. For the discipline of the troops. You don’t have LA/fifty-three-oh-four, or its current stamp. A field ID. It has to be stamped every three days. To keep”—the smile broadened—“deserters from mingling with loyal troops.”
“Most of them just stayed. Waiting for the Americans. I went on. To find the rest of my unit. I was wounded in Russia. I have the Knight’s Cross.”
“A piece of shit,” the officer said.
“I have a note from my captain. It’s here, somewhere.”
“You’re a deserter. A swine. We’ve run into others like you. You’re going where they are now. To a dance in midair. Take the pig.”
Repp felt the muzzle of the STG pressing hard into his back and at the same moment his own rifle was yanked off his back. Someone shoved him and he fell oafishly to the ground.
“You stinking fucker,” a teen-aged voice behind him cursed. “We’ll hang you till your tongue’s blue.” He hit Repp in the lower spine with his rifle butt. The pain almost crippled Repp. He yelped, lurching forward, and lay in agony, rubbing the bruise through his greatcoat.
The young soldier grabbed him roughly by the arm, pulling him up with great disgust, the STG momentarily lowered in the effort, and as Repp was twisted upward he laid the P-38 barrel against the youth’s throat and shot it out; then, as the boy fell back, very calmly Repp pivoted, steadying the pistol with the other hand under the butt, and shot the young officer in the face, disintegrating it. He shot two other men off the hull of the self-propelled gun where they sat, paralyzed, and dropped the pistol. He stood and pried the STG from the tight fingers of the first soldier, who lay back behind sightless eyes, slipping into coma, his throat spasming empty of blood. He wouldn’t last long.
Repp’s finger found the fire-selector rod of the assault rifle just above the trigger guard and he rammed it to full automatic, at the same time palming back the bolt. Three more SS men careered from behind the vehicle. He shot from the hip without thinking, one long burst, half the magazine, knocking them flat in a commotion of dust spurts. He ran another burst across the bodies just in case, the earth puffing and fanning from the strike of the bullets.
Repp stood back, the weapon hot in his hand. The whole thing had taken less than five seconds. He waited, ready to shoot at any sign of motion, but there was none.
What waste, what sheer waste! Good men, loyal men, doing their jobs. Dead in a freak battleground accident. He was profoundly depressed.
Blood everywhere. It speckled the skin of the self-propelled gun, swerving jaggedly down to the fender, where it collected in a black pool. It soaked the uniforms of the two men who lay before the big vehicle, and puddles of it gathered around the three he’d taken in the last long burst. Repp turned. The boy he’d shot in the throat lay breathing raspily.
Repp knelt and lifted the boy’s head gently. Blood coursed in torrents from the throat wound, disappearing inside the collar of his jacket. He was all but finished, his eyes blank, his face gray and calm.
“Father. Father, please,” he said.
Repp reached and took his hand and held it until the boy was gone.
He s
Goddamn! Goddamn!
It made him sick. He wanted to vomit.
They would pay. The Jews would pay. In blood and money.
18
Ugh!
Roger sat in his Class A’s on the terrace of the Ritz. Before him was a recent edition of the New York Herald Tribune, the first page given to a story by a woman named Marguerite Higgins, who had arrived with the 22d Regiment, some motorized hot shots, at the concentration camp of Dachau.
Roger almost gagged. The bodies heaped like garbage, skinny sacks, ribs stark. The contrast between that place and this, Paris, Place Vendôme, the ritzy Ritz, the city shoring up for an imminent VE-Day, girls all over the place, was almost more than he could take.
Leets and Outhwaithe were there, poking about. Roger was due back in a day or so.
But he had come to a decision: he would not go.
I will not go.
No matter what.
He shivered, thinking of the slime at Dachau. He imagined the smell. He shivered again.
“Cold?”
“Huh? Oh!”
Roger looked up into the face of the most famous tennis player of all time.
“You’re Evans?” asked Bill Fielding.
“Ulp,” Roger gulped spastically, shooting to his feet. “Yes, sir, yes, sir, I’m Roger Evans, Harvard, ’47, sir, probably ’49 now, with this little interruption, heh, heh, number-one singles there my freshman year.”
The great man was a head taller than Roger, still thin as an icicle, dressed in immaculate white that made his tan seem deeper than burnished oak; he was in his late forties but looked an easy thirty-five.
Roger was aware that all commerce on the busy terrace had stopped; they were looking at Bill Fielding, all of them—generals, newspapermen, beautiful women, aristocrats, gangsters. Fielding was a star even in the exotic confines of the Ritz. And Roger knew they were also looking at him.
“Well, let me tell you how this works. You’ve played at Roland Garros?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, we’ll be on the Cour Centrale of course—”
Of course, thought Roger.
“—a clay surface, in an amphitheater, about eight thousand wounded boys, I’m told, plus the usual brass—you’ve played in front of crowds, no nerve problems or anything?”
Roger? Nervous?
“No, sir,” he said. “I played in the finals of the Ivies and I made it to the second round at Forest Hills in ’44.”
Fielding was not impressed.
“Yes, well, I hope not. Anyway, I usually give the boys a little talk, using Frank as a model, show them the fundamentals of the game. The idea is first to entertain these poor wounded kids but also to sell tennis. You know, it’s a chance to introduce the game to a whole new class of fan.”
Yeah, some class, most of ’em just glad they didn’t get their balls blown off in the fighting, but he nodded intently.
“Then you and Frank will go two sets, three maybe, depends on you.” Roger did not like at all the assumption here that he was the sacrificial goat in all this. “Then you and I, Frank and Major Miles, our regular Army liaison, will go a set of doubles, just to introduce them to that. Agreeable?”
“Whatever you say, Mr. Fielding. Uh, I saw you at Forest Hills in ’31. I was just a kid—” Oops, that was a wrong thing to say.
Fielding glowered. “Not a good tournament for me.”
“Quarters. You played Maurice McLaughlin.”
Fielding’s face lit up at the memory of the long-ago match; he was just coming off his prime then, his golden years, and still had great reserves of the good stuff, the high-octane tennis, left. “Oh, yes, Maurie. Lots of power, strength. But somehow lacking … Three and love, right?”
He remembers?
“That’s right, sir.”
“Yes, well, I hope you’ve got more out there than poor Maurie,” said Fielding disgustedly.
“Uh, I’ll sure try,” said Roger. Fielding was certainly blunt.
“All right. You’ve got transportation out to Auteuil, I assume.”
“Yes, sir, the Special Services people have a car and—”
Fielding was not interested in the details. “Fine, Sergeant, see you at one,” and he turned and began to stride forcefully away, the circle opening in awe.
“Uh. Mr. Fielding,” said Roger, racing after. His heart was pounding but once out at the Stade, he’d never have a chance.
“Yes?” said Fielding, a trifle annoyed. He had a long nose that he aimed down almost like the barrel of a rifle. His eyes were blue and pale and unwavering.
“Frank Benson. He’s good, I hear.”
“My protégé. A future world champion, I hope. Now if—”
“I’m better,” blurted Roger. There. He’d said it.
Fielding’s face lengthened in contempt. He seemed to be turning purple under the tan. He was known for his towering rages at incompetence, lack of concentration, quitters, the overbrash, the slow, the blind, the halt and the lame. Roger smiled bravely and forged ahead. He knew that here, as on the court, to plant your sneakers was to die. Attack, attack: close to the net, volley away for a kill.
“I can beat him. And will, this afternoon. Now I just want you to think about this. Continuing this tour with someone second-best is gonna kinda take the fun out of it, I’d say.”
The silence was ferocious.
Roger thrust on. “Now if I bury him, if I pound him, if I shellac him—” He was prepared to continue with colorful metaphors for destruction for quite some time, but Fielding cut him off.
“What is it you want?”
“Simple. In. In fast.”
“The tour?”
“Yes, sir.”
Fielding’s face confessed puzzlement. “The shooting’s over. Why now, all of a sudden?”
Roger could not explain—maybe even to himself—about the bodies at Dachau, the vista of wormy stiffs.
“Just fed up, is all, sir. Like you, I was put on this earth to hit a tennis ball. Anything else is just time misspent. I did my duty. In fact my unit just took part in what will probably be the last airborne operation in the ETO, a night drop and a son of a bitch, you’ll pardon me.” And it had been, sitting back at 82d Airborne Ops, running low on coffee and doughnuts. Roger tried to look modest. “And finally, well”—tricky this, he’d heard Fielding couldn’t abide bootlickers—“finally there’s you: a chance to apprentice under Fielding, under the best. I knew I’d better give it my best serve, flat out, go for the line, or always wonder about it.” He looked modestly—or what he presumed to be modestly—at his jump boots.
“You’re not shy, are you?” Fielding finally said.
“No, sir,” admitted Roger, “I believe in myself. Here, and on the court.” Roger realized with a start, He hasn’t said No.
“Words before a match are cheap. That’s why I never had any. Frank is my protégé. Ever since I discovered him at that air base in England, I’ve believed he had it in him to be the world’s best, as I was. You want in, do you? Well, this afternoon we’ll see if your game is as big as your ego. Or your mouth.”
He turned and walked out off the terrace.
Roger thought, Almost there.
But before Roger could insert Dachau into his file of might-have-beens there was Benson to play, Benson to beat, thinking positively, and Roger knew this would not be so easy. He’d done a little research on the guy, No. 1 at Stanford, ’39 and ’40, made the third round at Forest Hills in ’41, a Californian with that Westerner’s game, coming off those hard concrete courts, serve and volley, Patton-style tennis, always on the attack. But he’d shelved the tennis for four years, Air Corps, done twenty-three trips over Germany as a B-17 bombardier (D.F.C. even! another hero like Leets), survived the slaughterhouse over Schweinfurt the second time somehow, and only picked the game back up as a way of relaxing, cooling down near the end of his tour, when the
Fielding wanted Benson right away; he got him, even two missions short of twenty-five.
Benson was tall, thin, a ropy blond with calm gray eyes and marvelous form. He moved fast slowly, meaning that he had such effortless grace that he never seemed to lunge or lurch, rather glided about the court in his white flannels—for his eccentricity was to stick to the pleated flannel trousers of the Twenties and early Thirties, unlike the more stylish Rog, who’d been wearing shorts à la Riggs and Budge since he was a kid. Benson hit leapers, all that topspin, causing the ball to hiss and pop, even though the Cour Centrale was a porous clay-type composition, not quite en-tout-cas, but very, very slow. It was like playing on toast. The surface sucked the oomph from those slammed Western forehand drives, but to Roger, across from him, hitting in warm-up, the guy looked like seven skinny feet of white death, methodical, unflappable, unstoppable.
Still, Roger specialized in confidence, and his had not dropped a notch since his get-together with the Great Man this morning. He’d taken on big hitters before: it demanded patience, guile and plenty of nerve. Mainly you had to hold together on the big points, perform when the weight of the match squashed down on you. If you could run down their hottest stuff, these big hitters would blow up on you, get wilder and fiercer and crazier. He’d seen plenty like that, who fell apart, quit, hadn’t that hard, bitter kernel of self-righteousness inside that made victory usual.
The Cour Centrale at Roland Garros sat in the center of a steeply tiered cement amphitheater which was now jamming up with uniforms. A flower bed along one side of the court, under the boxes where Important Brass now gathered, showed bright and cheerful, new to spring—the orderly German officers who’d played here during the Occupation had kept them up. Lacoste had owned this place with its soft, gritty-brown surface, along with his equally merciless sidekicks Borotra and Cochet; they’d called them the Three Musketeers back during their heyday, and only Fielding, with his power and control and, most of all, his guts, had been able to stand up to them here. So Roger wasn’t just a player; he was a part of history, a part of tradition. He felt absorbed into it, taken with it, warmed by it, and now the ball seemed to crack cleanly off the center of strings. Was it his imagination or was even this audience of shot-up youngsters beginning to throb with enthusiasm? Pennants snapped in the wind. The shadows became distinct. The lines of the court were precise and beautiful. The balls were white and pure. Rog felt like a million bucks. This was where he belonged.